Random Chance Divination: Casting Lots and Throwing Dice

In this episode of Fabulous Folklore, host Icy Sedgwick explores the ancient and enduring practice of divination through randomness, focusing on casting lots, throwing dice, and using symbolic objects like witch stones. She traces the origins of cleromancy—divination by lots—back to Roman and Germanic traditions, examining Tacitus’s description of Germanic tribes using marked tree slices and questioning the assumption that these were runes. The episode delves into lithomancy, or 'witch stones,' noting their modern commercial popularity despite a lack of historical evidence, and highlights how personal symbolism and intuition play a central role in interpretation. Astragalomancy, the use of animal bones and later dice, is discussed with examples from ancient Greece and a 1903 folk fortune-telling method using three six-sided dice. Icy also shares her own creative adaptations, including hand-made witch stones and astrological dice, emphasizing accessibility and personal meaning. The episode concludes with a reflection on how these practices endure not for their antiquity but for their simplicity, flexibility, and psychological resonance in the modern world.